This is one book which I have just finished reading. I don’t normally read biography, but came across the story while doing some random search on wikipedia (where one link can lead to another). I really got very interested in the true story of this young man who ended up dying in Alaska. I went to buy the book at Kinokuniya.

In 1992, a young man by the name of Christopher McCandless from a well-to-do family in the US abandoned everything he possessed after graduating with honours from University. For the next two years, he lived off the streets, travelling from place to place, living on the bare minimum. Finally, he hitchhiked to Alaska with little food (only 5 pounds of rice) and equipment as he wanted to be in total isolation from human contact and go into the wild, in his words "to live off the land" – eating the animals he hunted and plants grown there. He actually managed to survive for more than 100 days in Alaska with this way until a series of unfortunate accidents that caused him to die slowly (and painfully) of starvation on an abandoned bus. His decomposed body was found more than two weeks later. He was only 24 at the time of demise. All this while, his family didn’t know his whereabouts and was searching for him, until they received this piece of unfortunate news.

In this book, Jon Krakauer explored the life of Christopher McCandless and try to understand the thoughts behind this young man who gave up everything he has in search of a life of adventure and meaning (to him), and also how the people around him were affected. He must had been a very charismatic person, as people he met along the way during his years on the streets really liked this guy a lot. Some actually asked him to settle down at the place he was at. But then his ultimate aim was to really live in the wild with only nature (and nothing else, human relationships was worthless to him) and commitment was the last thing on his mind.

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